On Thu, 6 Jun 2002 14:16:23 -0400, ardeith l carter <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Amadeus wrote:
>> Why did then human brain size fall (by 3% according to your
>numbers)  in a time, where animal consumption increased a lot,
> in the time between 35000 to 10000 BC.
>
>Ardeith writes:
>Amadeus, that's not what it says........it says that earlier in
>human evolution, human brain size *increased* in proportion
>to the meat consumed, 'way back.....500K to a million years
>ago.

Ardeith, the human brain increased dramatically, but not "in proportion to
th meat consumed". You simply don't know how much meat was consumed in the
main brain enlarging times. From 1.9 to 1 to 500 mya.
In the times of the biggest enlargements, we know hardly of particular
increasing hunting skills of australopithecines or homo erectus.

Where this happened, in the savannahs of Africa,
animals were lean - which limited the  consumption of meat
USOs were abundant - tubers ara ideally adapted to a savannah

The times from 35000 to 10000 were certainly a period of the most meat
consumption, for the reasons I mentioned (Cro Magnon are the smartest
hunters). But at this time the brain size did decrease.
Neolithic times were after 10000 in some regions but in most regions like
Europe it was  after 5000bc.

If you look at these numbers, you realize that the brain *volume* decrease
started in a high meat time and the verg big brain volume increase started
in a time with relative little meat.

>Ardeith writes:
>Sorry, that's not what the anthropologist of the world think.....
>The anthropologists say our brains increased in size with the
>eating of meat as a regular part of our diets.......

Well that *used to be* a common conviction, now it's under discussion.
Clearly meat has no ability for the energy supply of the brain.
It contains no glucose, and little from gluconeogenesis.
Some scientists, including L.Cordain think that pre-formed LC-fatty acids
(DHA,AA) could have supported brain growth (assuming that a mother's DHA
synthesis isn't enough). That would require 1kg of meat everyday, or 2 or 3
animal brains in a lifetime.
Or sufficient DHA synthesis in humans, particularly females.

>Ardeith writes:
>The Neanderthals survived 100K years during the Ice Ages,
>which modern humans probably could not do......

That's not right. Modern humans replaced Neanderthals exactely at the peak
of the last ice age, the maximum glaciation 40k years ago.
Before the last ice age Neanderthals experienced a very large thermal (warm
phase) of some 50k years, the Eem with phases even warmer than today.

>Ardeith writes:
>When I was taking anthropology courses, in the 1980's, they
>were teaching that the earliest evidence of "controlled" use
>of fire was only 40K years ago, at a place called "Terra
>Amata"........I think that date has been moved back a
>couple of 100K years lately.

Now stone hearths are found and dated back to 300 or 400k years back.
Some findings indicate much older fireplaces up to 1.5 mio years back.
Such reddened areas are local small fires and research is beeing done
to prove if such areas are artificial fireplaces or natural lightning fires.

>Ardeith writes:
>Go take another look at gorillas and orangutuans.....
>they have bit paunches....big guts.....of the sort
>required to digest masses of plant materials.

Big apes like gorillas digest a lot of cellulose material, leaves and bark.
For this they need a bigger fermentig area in the gut, to split up the
cellulose and derive enough energy out of it.

Fruit is direct energy, as you note.
Starchy food like tubers contain are likewise easily digestible energy.
With little effort by enzymes which we humans even have in our salvia.
Switching from  cellulose to starch is exactely what gives reason
to reduce the gut size of the fermenting part.

>The human gut is more like the predator gut that the
>leaf eater's gut.......

"More like" is right, because the fermentig gut can be spared.
But predators have even much smaller guts as humans have.
Meat diets require much smaller guts, as you find in cats or sharks.
Humans are in between, that's the gut length necessary to digest
amounts of plant material without cellulose.

>designed to digest and draw energy
>from meat, primarlily, but able to handle plant foods
>too.

Designed to handle plant foods and able to handle animal food too.
Hits the nail more accurately.

>.. you can in no way make a valid argument
>that humans developed their body design and brain
>size on a vegetarian diet.

There is no word of vegetarian.
But body design and brain enlargement perfectely fit to a diet
of denser brain food (brain fuels glucose).  Tubers.
That's part of the theory of Dr.Wrangham.
Do you have the paper? If not, I can give you.

>Then when you add in the improved health of so many
>people, including me, who have decided to cut grains
>from their diets,...

> it is even more unlikely that we evolved
>as vegetarians.

Again, that has nothing to do with vegetarianism.
That's annother topic, my personal decicion, more related to esthetical
themes like the similarity of grubs and cow bodies.
Not my discussion.

> You just don't grow people the size
>of our European ancestors on grain-based diets.

You should see my son, who is 16 and 1.88 meters tall (6.168 ft).
He never ate meat in his whole life (and that's his own decision, he doesn't
life in my household).

> The
>Norse and Germanic tribal warriors of 2K years ago
>were awesome......and they weren't vegetarians!

No, of course they weren't.
But they ate a lot of grains. Vikinks barley for example, and fish.
Grain is the fuel of these warriors.
With meat from hunting and their limited agriculture they would never have
been able to nourish such large amounts of people. That's only possible
today, with mass farmhouses, mass soy production etc.

You reported how much you health increased when you cut grains.
I'm shure you didn't cut grains, but grain products.
Probably cutting grain products and switching to full grains would have had
a similar effect. Maybe better. If you were free of cereal sensitivity and
if you would have learned about how to handle them properly.

regards

Amadeus